Calomera littoralis
| Calomera littoralis | ||||||||||||
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Calomera littoralis littoralis |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Calomera littoralis | ||||||||||||
| ( Fabricius , 1787) |
Calomera littoralis is a beetle from the family of ground beetles (Carabidae). It is immediatelyrecognizableas a tiger beetle based on its appearance and behavior. One often finds the synonyms Cicindela (Lophyridia) littoralis and Cicindela lunulata . It is distributed in several subspecies from southern Europe to Asia. Five subspecies are listed for Europe alone.
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| Fig. 1: side view | Fig. 2: underside |
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| Fig. 3: Front view at high resolution, the tooth in the middle of the front edge of the head shield is clearly visible |
Fig. 4: Mouth parts at an angle from below Button on the right side colored blue: lip button ; green: jaw button; yellow: 2nd pine button |
Characteristics of the beetle
"Cic. obscurae aenea, elytris nigricantibus, punctis sex albibus, baseos lunato, medio transverso ” is the original Latin description of the beetle in 1787.
The flattened body reaches a length of ten to seventeen millimeters. It is dark on top with a faint copper sheen and iridescent dark blue-green on the underside . The first of the six visible abdominal segments ( sternites ) have grown together.
The angular head is grooved on the forehead and on the sides and has long hair on the cheeks (the hair can be seen clearly in Fig. 1). The eyes are very prominent, their outer edge distance is greater than the width of the pronotum . The beetle can see almost the entire area. The mouthparts point forward. The large crescent-shaped upper jaws are black and white on the outside at the base. The tip is drawn out like a dagger and the inside is reinforced with three very sharp teeth. The animal has a pair of four-part, very hairy lip buttons (blue in Fig. 4). The jaws are also four-limbed and hairy (green in Fig. 4); In addition, the outer lower jaw is designed as a two-part second jaw probe (yellow in Fig. 4). All six buttons are unusually thin and long. The dirty white upper lip is extended to the front like a tooth (not three-toothed, clearly visible at high resolution in Fig. 3). It is covered with numerous long bristle hairs pointing forward. The antennae are eleven-link and thread-shaped. They are turned over the mandibles laterally in front of the eyes and are velvety hairy from the fifth limb. Its first four links are shiny metallic, the following ones are matt brown. In contrast to the genus Lophyra , the males do not have a tuft of bristles on the fourth antennae.
The legs are long-limbed and enable fast running. The tarsi are five-part. The coloring of the legs is very variable.
The elytra are granular and marked with several marble-white partly band-shaped, partly round spots (blemishes). The shoulder spot (humeral blemish) is moon-shaped, on the left wing cover in the form of a C and on the right as its mirror image. The shoulder patch hugs the edge of the wing cover so closely that only its beginning and end are perceived as two separate spots from above. The spot at the end of the wing cover (apical) can also be understood as a sickle-like connection of two spots that nestle against the end of the wing cover edge. Between the humeral and apical blemishes there are four more punctiform spots on each wing cover, the front two about half the length of the wing cover and parallel to it the two rear ones in the last third of the wing cover. Two of these spots are on the outside of the wing edge and are rather elongated, two are on top (on the disc) and are more round. Of the latter, the rear one is almost circular and is very close to the wing cover seam , the one in front is a little further away from the wing seam and continues in the direction of the edge patch below, with which it can also merge. The size and exact location of the blemishes varies between the different subspecies and also within a subspecies.
Way of life
The beetles are diurnal, they only come out of their hiding places when the environment is warm enough. They are shy and move jerkily across the ground at great speed. At the slightest disturbance, they fly up and land again after a few meters. The beetles fly very well and make a humming noise. If the temperature is insufficiently high, they do not like to fly or not at all. Besides, they don't like wind. When at rest they crouch flat on the ground and are then well camouflaged. Most of the time, you can only recognize their presence by their flying. They often appear in groups and can then be mistaken for a flock of flies. They are also found in association with other species of tiger beetle.
The beetles feed on other insects and arthropods . They recognize their prey with their eyes and lie in wait for it during the warm time of the day. They often change their observation place. If they have spotted potential prey, they approach it in a short “run”. This can repeat itself until they discard the targeted object as prey or decide to attack. Because of their speed, their victim rarely escapes them. They disdain dead prey, but may well fall into wounded or weakened conspecifics. The prey is grabbed with the upper jaws and cut up.
When mating, the males hold the females with the pincers between the breast shield and the wing covers, whereupon the females fight violently. During such moments, both of them are often prey to small mammals, predatory flies, or other predatory insects.
The females lay the eggs in sand, where they stay until they hatch. The hatched larvae dig a cave with vertical access to the outside. In these, the larvae can move up and down at great speed with the help of a pair of support hooks on the fifth abdomen segment. The rounded head is bent and large enough so that it can close the opening of the passage. If the larva detects prey, it leaves the cave entrance at lightning speed and pounces on it. It grabs the prey with the pointed mandibles and pulls itself into the cave, in the bottom of which it eats it in peace. Then she pushes her head under the skeletal remains of the prey and transports them to the cave exit. With an abrupt movement of her head, she flings the remains away from the immediate vicinity of the entrance. Pupation takes place on the cave floor. But even as adults, they withdraw into caves they have dug themselves when it is too hot or cold.
Occurrence
The species is distributed in many subspecies in Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia and North Africa. The subspecies C. littoralis littoralis occurs close to the coast in the southern and western Mediterranean region, from Cyrenaica ( Libya ) to the mouth of the Ebro ( Spain ), and on the Atlantic coast from Casablanca in Morocco to Le Havre in France. The distribution area of C. littoralis nemoralis overlaps with that of C. littoralis littoralis in the Ebro delta and extends from there along the northern Mediterranean coast to the Black Sea . In addition, C. littoralis nemoralis occurs around the Aral Sea , almost everywhere on the Caspian Sea and in several isolated places in Europe and Asia . The other subspecies have smaller ranges mainly outside Europe, which are often not contiguous.
The animals live in open habitats with sparse or no vegetation near the shore. They occur on the beach, on brackish lakes and salt pans ( halophilic ), but can also be found along irrigation ditches, reservoirs and other watercourses. They are moisture-loving and tolerate high levels of salt . It is believed that the species originated in North Africa. In Spain the species is found from March to December.
swell
- Carl Gustav Calwer and Gustav Jäger (eds.): CG Calwer's Käferbuch . Thienemanns, Stuttgart 1876, 3rd edition
- José María Urbano Granero, Antonio Llinares and Jerónimo Navarro: Aportaciones al estudio de los carábidos (Coleoptera, Adephaga, Caraboidea) de Sevilla (Andalucía, España). 2. Cicindelidae. Boletín de la Sociedad Andaluza de Entomología, No. 11, 2004, pp. 14–30, ISSN 1578-1666 (Spanish, available online )
- For the identifying features see: Pietro Brandmayr, Tullia Zetto and Roberto Pizzolotto: I Coleotteri Carabidi per la valutazione ambientale e la conservazione della biodiversità. Agenzia per la protezione dell'ambiente e per i servizi tecnici (APAT), Manuali e Linee Guida, No. 34, 2005 (Italian, available online )
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. Carl Gustav Jablonsky and Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Herbst : Natural system of all known domestic and foreign insects, as a continuation of von Büffon's natural history: The Beetle I.-X. Part. Joachim Pauli, Berlin 1806
- ↑ Karl Mandl : Distribution maps of the species of the Lophyridia Lunulata group (Col., Cicindelidae). Journal of the Working Group of Austrian Entomologists, Volume 33, Issue 3/4, 1981 (1982), pp. 92–94 ( available online , PDF)
Web links
- Karl Mandl (1982): Distribution maps of the species of the Lophyridia lunulata group (PDF; 583 kB)
- Calomera littoralis in Fauna Europaea